Senior Chapter Lead - QA

We have an opportunity for an experienced Technical Leader of Leaders to fill our QA Senior Chapter Lead vacancy. This a pivotal strategic leadership position needed to refine and champion our QA best Practice and support the QA Capability Members across the holistic Admiral Estate.

Within the QA Capability we aim to continuously elevate the QA Engineering maturity to enable Admiral's continued efforts to be a market leader in financial services.

It is within our remit to create products, services and opportunities for our business and our customers. We focus on simplicity, security, speed and significance in all that we do. Our mission is to deliver value in the form of efficient and effective test frameworks, data, tooling and decision-making processes for the Admiral QA community, to help drive value and service to Our customers and Our business.

You will work within the BTG IT Engineering department focusing on Programs and Projects covering both the Value Streams and Corporate Services areas. The area is comprised of Programme Test Managers, QA Chapter Leads, QA Staff Engineers, Test Automation Engineers, Software Engineers, Squad Leads and Product Owners, working within the Google Cloud Platform, whose primary focus is to design and develop innovative technology solutions for a variety of internal stakeholders.

Accountabilities

• Accountable for recruitment, development and retention of technical resources including career pathway development for all technical squad members.
• Accountable for defining and setting compensation, benefits, and promotions for all members of the relevant Chapter.
• Accountable for providing and applying effective performance management processes and mechanisms supporting squad leaders and product owners in increasing squad performance.
• Accountable for providing an inclusive environment where Chapter members have freedom and safety to innovate, experiment, and learn from failure.
• Accountable owner and role model for applying the following values: productivity, quality, transparency, and openness into the Chapters ways of working and production of outcomes.
• Accountable for providing open and effective communication channels leading to greater knowledge transfer within the Chapter.
• Accountable for ensuring engineering, design and testing standards and practices comply with Admiral IT governance and architectural standards while performing in a heavily regulated environment.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for providing line management duties for Programme Test Managers, Chapter Leads and Technical Individual contributors within the relevant Capability, with a view to focussing on coaching and mentoring techniques that align to both agile principles and Admiral values.
• Responsible for technical resource recruitment, retention, and overall onboarding process for all Squad level technical members of the relevant Chapter.
• Responsible for supporting both personal and technical skills development for all Squad level technical members enabling greater Squad operational performance.
• Responsible for providing effective career development for all Squad level technical members of the relevant Chapter.
• Responsible for effectively administrating Chapter member's compensation, benefits and promotion processes.
• Responsible for enabling Squads to meet their expected outcomes by supporting them in problem identification, root cause analysis, and decision-making.
• Responsible for improving Squad performance by applying effective performance management controls leveraging input from relevant Squad Lead and Product Owners leading onto providing corrective actions when necessary.
• Responsible for identifying, teaching, or championing the required software and hardware engineering skills needed to support the development of high-quality code, components, systems, and solutions.
• Responsible for supporting all Chapter members in living the following values in everything they do: productivity, quality, transparency, and openness over internal politics.
• Responsible for serving as a senior coach and advisor to Agile Squads. Remaining close enough to the Squads to add value and to be a competent manager, while staying far enough away to let them problem-solve on their own.
• Responsible for supporting Squad Leads and Product Owners in knowledge transition between both Squads and the wider Organisation by applying clear and concise communication channels.

Key Interactions

• Follow Admiral's Perform and Grow management processes for all Direct Reports.
• Close relationship with BTG leadership focussing on understanding the development needs of their people.
• Participate in PI Planning and any relevant Programme, Agile Ceremony or Portfolio management checkpoint sessions and support teams by helping them remove systemic impediments.
• Help protect teams from distractions and unrelated or unnecessary work.
• Work with APMO to establish and monitor staffing needs.

Knowledge and Experience Required

• Extensive knowledge of customer experience (CX) interaction and integration as part of software development process (can be through scrum/ lean agile or standard SDLC).
• Extensive knowledge and experience with Line management through both coaching and mentoring techniques.
• Knowledge and experience in Scaled Agile development practices, using associated tools for testing and continuous integration & deployment.
• Knowledge and experience with design & Implementation of Test Automation Frameworks following the Testing Pyramid.
• Knowledge of identification and management of specific engineering, design and testing standards and practices that comply with internal organisation IT governance and architectural standards while performing within a heavily regulated environment.
• Knowledge and experience in the use of tools such as: Jira, Confluence etc.

Desirable Knowledge and Experience

• Testing of applications on Google Cloud Platform (or any major cloud platform) and awareness of serverless technologies.
• Automated delivery of software though CICD with automated testing.
• Understanding and implementing best practices for secure software development.
• Deployment of applications on Kubernetes.
• Cloud, SQL and NoSQL database technologies.
• Test driven development in Java, Typescript, Python or Javascript.
• Awareness and experience in Generative AI/Agentic Ai tooling.

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We're committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We're proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We're fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits
here